


Race to the Finish

by Dariaday



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fake Science, NASCAR, Unrequited Love, because it's Valentine's Day, then it gets requited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 10:07:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dariaday/pseuds/Dariaday
Summary: Oliver Queen is a NASCAR winner with his eye on a second cup. Felicity Smoak is his chief race engineer and the object of his unrequited affection. (no actual smut, I swear I tried!  I'm so sorry. But there's a lot implied and some swearing so therefore, the rating.)





	Race to the Finish

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT: "You wanna move this conversation somewhere more private?"

“I’m not overreacting, Oliver! This is serious!”

Oliver Queen felt the small hand clamp down on his bicep and stopped stalking toward the office. He moved to take the hand in his, too squeeze it softly, to give a touch of comfort to the woman who was quickly escalating from hangry (he knew she only ate half of Rene’s salad for lunch and probably didn’t even notice it wasn’t hers) to total freak-out. Unfortunately for Oliver, Felicity Smoak snatched her hand back like she’d been burned.

Oliver crossed his arms, purposefully making his arm muscles move because that always made the unrequited object of his affections take a second and recalibrate.

And she needed to take a second, or his career would go up in flames. 

Again. 

“You wanna move this conversation someplace more private?” Oliver said through clenched teeth. 

Felicity’s nostrils flared. Her eyes widened and she took a deep breath to fuel her next tirade, but Oliver stepped into her personal space, something he’d vowed to himself never to do since day one, when he’d gotten a hard-on from the scent of her floral shampoo mingling with the vaguely chemical burn from whatever electric work she’d been tinkering with.

Felicity Smoak worked for him. She _worked for him_ and her job was to keep him safe and alive and constantly improving his “work performance,” as she called it. He needed to keep his fucking distance, that’s what he needed to do, not get close enough to see the frustration in her blue eyes.

“I know it’s serious,” Oliver told her, his voice low. “That’s why I think we should talk in the office, not in the middle of the crowded shop. And I never said you were overreacting.”

“Yes you did, you said my data was insufficient.” 

Oliver fought a smile when Felicity clenched her fists. Of course his girl would get offended by having her numbers brushed off. 

_Ugh,_ not his girl. Dammit. 

“Felicity.” Oliver set one hand on her tense shoulder. Her skin was cold through the thin t-shirt she wore and his brain suddenly bloomed in a dozen different directions, the chief of which being she needed a sweatshirt or something, maybe one of his, maybe his leather jacket that always made her stare and blush when she looked away. “Felicity, I believe you. But we can’t fight about it here.”

“Why not, we fight about everything else in here.” Her tone was mulish. The way she pushed up her glasses was fake-nerd drama and he sighed to tell her that he saw that, he saw _her,_ and if she would just follow him to the office he could explain everything. 

“Because if you’re right, you’ve just uncovered proof of criminal activity. Okay? Do you understand?”

Felicity’s breath caught and she nodded. Oliver exhaled and jerked his chin toward the tiny office in the back of the shop. It was small and dingy and covered in an eternal sheen of oil, just like everything else in the shop, but they needed privacy for this conversation. The only window looked out onto the patchy field behind the warehouse, which meant that no one inside could see their argument or try to read lips or take bets, like they did when Oliver Queen, NASCAR champion went at it with his chief race engineer in the middle of the shop. 

Oliver shut the door behind Felicity and leaned against it, locking it behind him.

“Tell me again, from the beginning.”

“It’s not rocket science,” Felicity snapped. 

“Felicity, please.”

She sighed, but her hands were trembling. “Fine. Your stock car telemetry boxes are supposed to be completely replaced every three months. It’s a standard expense because it’s a safety issue. We take them in and out of the car so often that bolts get stripped, holes get widened—” Felicity broke off and closed her eyes for a second, but Oliver didn’t have the heart to chuckle at her accidental innuendo. This was serious, and they both knew it. “The race-standard telemetry fasteners that are supposed to be installed aren’t there. Slade is using old parts. He says he’s just trying to save money, but we don’t need to save money. We’re operating completely in the black. He told me I was crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“It’s one bolt,” Felicity said, laughing. “They all look the same.”

“Not to you.”

“No, not to me.” Felicity ran a shaky hand over her ponytail. “I think he’s the one who sabotaged the battery in Ronnie Raymond’s car last year. The telemetry box that caught fire? Wilson was on his pit crew that year. I think…I think Wilson’s been working his way here, crew by crew, to get to you.”

“This is the part we needed the privacy for.” Oliver took the two steps across the room and sat down hard in his desk chair, which squeaked when he swiveled to face Felicity, who moved to stand in front of him, leaning against the desk. “Slade Wilson is trying to kill me.”

Felicity’s mouth dropped open. She shut it quickly, pink lips pressing together as she shook her head.

“I don’t know if he’s trying to kill me through the telemetry boxes—one loose bolt can wreck a race, you know that as well as I do. But it’s obvious he’s getting sloppy, because he knows how much of a genius you are. He’d never mess with anything under your control.”

“Everything is under my control,” Felicity said, her voice shaky. “That’s why I delegate rebuilds, so I can work on statistics and R and D. Why is Slade trying to kill you?”

“He blames me for the crash that took his eye and killed his racing career.”

“Is it true?”

“No.” Oliver shook his head. “I was mid-pack when it happened. But that morning we lost two of our pit guys—flu—and he lent us Shado Fei, a fuel expert. Apparently, they were together, and she left him after the accident. He blames me, irrationally, and eternally.”

“That’s really obsessive. But I think he dodged a bullet with that Shado chick, I mean, who wants to be with someone who ditches you when the chips are down?”

“I know Shado Fei—she’s an engineering teacher now. She says they were never romantically involved. She says she left Slade because he’s completely crazy and refuses to get help.”

“Then why is he _on your crew?!_ ” 

Oliver smiled. Felicity had found her loud voice again.

“I hired Slade Wilson after Ronnie’s crash because the FBI asked me to.”

Felicity was silent.

Oliver’s smile grew. He could count the times Felicity Smoak had nothing to say on one hand. Half of one hand. Whether they were poring over schematics or watching replays or drinking beer with the guys, she always had something to say. Something smart, something funny, something infuriatingly right. She was the best race engineer he’d ever known, and if she ever left him…

…if she ever left him, he’d leave racing to follow her anywhere. 

“This is…you’re…there’s no earthly… _Oliver._ ”

“Hey, Felicity. _Felicity._ Look at me.” Oliver grabbed her cold hands in his and shook them a little to unshock her. “Rene is undercover FBI. Dinah is undercover SCPD. Yes, they’re working together on this case. Which is why I’m going to ask you to keep quiet. I want those fake boxes right where they are, because Dinah told me that Slade has been building a bomb to fit inside one of the race-approved boxes. He plans to ignite me as soon as I take the lead in the seventh.”

“Please tell me you have a brilliant plan to not get blown up?” Felicity said, tears filling her eyes. 

Oliver stood up. Touching her hands had unleashed the flood of all the times he’d wanted to touch her and hadn’t. All the times he shoved his hands in his pockets or took a step back or crossed his arms. He cupped her face in his hands and brushed away the tears that fell.

“I have a brilliant plan to not get blown up,” he told her. She laughed, or tried to, but the anger she’d started with had folded into worry. Worry for him. 

Oliver tried not to feel happy about that. He failed.

“I don’t want you to die,” Felicity said in a small voice. “Not yet.”

Oliver laughed, but kept his hands where they were, tilting her face up to his.

“I meant…”

“I know what you meant, Felicity.”

And he kissed her. She was reaching for him when they crashed together, so the tiny bit of guilt he had for not asking, not warning her, shed like water. Oliver pressed sliding, open-mouthed kisses against her soft lips that had them both groaning in seconds, until somehow she was sitting fully on the desk and he was pressed right up against her spread legs, his arms banded around her back.

“Oh,” she breathed when he touched their foreheads together and sucked in a ragged breath. 

“Yeah,” was all Oliver could say.

“I won’t say anything,” Felicity promised. 

“Thank you. I didn’t want to tell you because you’re a crap liar, but the race is this weekend. I think you can hold it together for two days, right?”

“No, I mean—yes, I can keep a secret like that, jeez—I meant I won’t say anything about the sex we’re about to have.”

Oliver almost died.

“W-what?”

“Well, you’re either going to finish that race like some god-like bad-ass undercover-cop-helping race car driver, or you’re going to literally die in a blaze of glory. There’s no way I’m going to keep pretending I’m not madly in love with you. Because you’ll either be giving interviews nonstopforever and won’t have time to have sex with me, or you’ll be, you know, dead.”

“Felicity, holy shit.” Oliver chuckled, then laughed. She grabbed the waistband of his cargo pants and hauled herself into him, and he stopped laughing. “We can’t do this here.”

“Why not? I heard you lock the door.” Felicity looked over her shoulder and her ponytail brushed against his chin. That’s how close she was. 

“I locked the door so we wouldn’t be interrupted during our conversation about federal investigations against one of the pit crew, not…not…”

“Oh.” Felicity hopped off the desk. Oliver managed to snag her hand before she got to the door.

“I want to,” he said hurriedly. “But not a ‘you-could-die’ quickie in the office.”

“Are you sure?” Felicity tilted her head. “I have my phone. I could stay in here for hours reading stuff on the internet, to make everyone out there think it took longer.”

“Felicity.” Oliver was pretty sure he growled her name, and though he didn’t mean to, she straightened to her full height—not much plus sass—and came willingly back into his arms. He leaned his ass against the desk and laced his fingers together at the small of her back. Up close, her eyes were blue as the sky. He breathed her in. “I’m not having sex with you here.”

“Where, then? Because all I can think about is kissing you again.”

Oliver kissed her again. It was only right. She wanted it, wanted _him,_ which was a fucking miracle, and making out while leaning against his desk was the beginning of a whole folder of “office sex” fantasies featuring his favorite engineer. It was also a forbidden folder, because coworkers, and gossip, and a complete and utter lack of condoms anywhere in the godforsaken place. But he could slide his palms down her luscious ass and pull her close. He could smear her lipstick right off. The warm, trembling, wet slide of her tongue against his made him groan and wrap her up so tight he thought she might push him off, but instead she started grinding against him. 

“The window,” she gasped when Oliver moved his kisses to her neck. 

“What?”

“We can go out the window. Have sex in the back field near the parts graveyard.”

Oliver laughed, for the second time in the same day. Only Felicity Smoak could make that happen.

“Felicity. I’m going to open this door and finish the simulation patterns Curtis set up for me. You’re going to finish running specs on the fuel injection system. And then, when it’s time to go home, you come over to my place.”

“We’re clear this is for sex, right? Not some elaborate dinner you surprise me with? Because I’m not saying no to all the dating stuff, I just need to hold off til after the weekend, when I’m sure you’re gonna stay in the land of the living.”

“I promise to have sex with you, Felicity.”

This was the first such assurance Oliver had ever made to a woman, which tickled his funny bone. Again. And God, the way she squinted at him to make sure he wasn’t kidding, that made his heart skip a beat. 

“I love you, you know.” Felicity wasn’t kidding anymore.

“I love you, too. I have since the day you walked into the shop waving a copy of ‘Moneyball’ and claiming you could save my career.”

“It didn’t need saving, it just needed a little more math. And some totally legal, patent pending engineering.”

“I needed you,” Oliver stressed.

Felicity kissed him sweetly on the lips and took two giant, exaggerated steps away from him. 

“See you tonight.”

Oliver loomed in the doorway to stare down anyone who dared cat-call Felicity on her way back to her “lair,” as she called it. It worked in the repair bay. But as soon as she rounded the corner into the design bay, she blithely announced “we didn’t have sex but we totally made out on his desk.” No one could see him glowering from there, so no one silenced their whistles or cheering. 

He went back to his desk, smiling again. 

He couldn’t wait for tonight.


End file.
